From Chapters 14-15:
Fourteen.
It’s Monday and Milt finds me five minutes before I leave
for an extended lunch. “Wanna have lunch with me? One
on one?”
What can I say? “Sure.”
“Great!”
I decide to show him my favorite lunch spot, a sport’s
bar on 19th Street called The Goose. We enter and I’m
quick to say, “Hey Milt, are we going to have a drink?”
“We’re on company time. You know the policy.”
“So, the French do it all the time when they come into
town. They drink heavy.”
“I don’t know. They’re different.”
“They’re French! So what—we work for the
same company.”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s a little drink? You can pretend I’m
French.”
“Ok. Go ahead. But don’t pretend you’re French,”
he laughs. I fake laughter in return.
The waitress has fair skin and thick blue eye shadow with eyebrows
painted on. For some reason I want to reach over and smear them
across her forehead. An abstract expression maybe. “A
mondo pear cider,” I say.
“And for you?” she says to Milt.
“C’mon Milt. Loosen up, man.”
“Alright. Sierra Nevada. In a mug!” He looks at
me and smiles boyishly.
“There’s the spirit!”
“Wow. Freakin’ wow. This is cool. This is so cool.”
The asshole doesn’t know what to say. Two beers later
he finally starts the dialogue.
“So, what’s it all about?”
“What do you mean, Milt?”
“This? This right here. Right now. What’s this
all about?”
“I don’t know. Still trying to ponder the ten minutes
after I woke up today.”
“Well I know, let me tell you. It’s about strategy.”
“Strategy?”
“Oh yeah it is. You bet. There are strategies going on
right now to figure all this shit out.”
He’s beginning to sound a little too much like Kira de
Frito for me to understand. But he’s the boss. So I have
to listen.
“You know, I was meant to be a Hollywood producer. I
can do it. I can bring in the big bucks for the big productions.
All this stuff. You know—the wireless. It’s freakin’
great. But there is something else. I mean. I got Adobe into
the business. I got Hanks in with the right movie crowd. Yeah.
He won’t tell and I won’t either. But enough of
that. I was cooking macaroons with Bo Derek and she told me
I was like a little boy flying a kite to Neverland. ‘Riding
the wind you always are, Milty’, she said. Well not quite
like that—but she did say something similar. She’s
a doll. She kissed me and wondered if I was made of wood. Can
you believe that? Sweet huh? But who needs macaroons? And who
needs Hollywood? I’m going to manage this wireless shit
right into the mystical universe. I’ll market us to the
very stars!! Look out Mars! Look out International Space Station!
I’m taking this place for a kite ride that not even Bo
Derek can imagine!”
I’m nodding just like I’m expected to, though I’m
about to nod toward the not so distant land of sleep. Luckily
we’re up and actually wanting to go back to the office.
But not after a whirlwind tour of the coffeehouse where I get
a blended mocha, get an awkward stare from the Kramer look-a-like
who is reading some transfatty book about literary failings
titled: Twenty Great Romance Novels to Scoff At. For
some reason I have the feeling that he’s been there for
two hours, while my lunch break today is only one dismal hour
and fifteen minutes in total. It always sucks to take the boss
along. Never again I swear.
Fifteen.
Boredom sinks its teeth like a werewolf. It’s not a fluffy
little teddy bear we squeeze and yawn at and talk baby talk
to. It’s an infection the corporate world spreads to everyone
with a nasty bite late at night when we’re dreaming of
Fijian jungle paradises, umbrella drinks, or lovemaking with
superstars—yeah even the plastic ones are great in late
night dreams. It’s such a horrible disease when you’re
bit. Think about it. You wake up one day and find yourself transforming
into the boredom monster that sunk its teeth into you the week
prior, the month prior, the decade prior. You stretch across
your living room floor twitching, convulsing; the snout of the
disease begins to push its way from the front of your face.
You fight it. You try to push it back in. Goddam it if you’re
not made of Play-Doh and you succeed. You turn on the morning
news to see newscasters with smiles developed in some class
called Cheesy Communication TV Grins 101 (For Beginners).
Some actually look like they’re having fun gritting their
white teeth while reading, “In the news today, 75 children
have exploded at the hands of terrorists.” There’s
a holy war somewhere that is really evil. American troops are
dying, but you’re stuck fighting boredom on the home front.
Hollywood isn’t helping either. You feel you know every
plot of every film. And you’re stupid enough to watch
the trailers because you are bored, and so everything is given
away. You miss the day when you didn’t think there was
going to be a Star Wars sequel and boredom escaped because everything
was fresh like At-At walkers lazing about in a perfect
gleaming morning snow. Corporate America has infected you by
biting a large chunk of flesh out of your ass. I don’t
know about you but I yearn for wooden coffee stirrers versus
those stupid plastic straws that some other corporation is making
millions off of. I wonder what will happen if I fully transform
into boredom itself. Will it hurt? Will I merrily drink the
blood of corporate America? The infection spreads but I keep
pushing that snout deep into my face until it springs jack-in-the-box
out with a pop! only to be fought against time and again.
Today I swear Vishnu has seen my snout suddenly pop out during
the first infinitesimal minute of our marketing meeting. I swear
I am giving in to the transformation. I am losing it. Milt Butterlink
stands before the room. He turns his back to the table where
Joan, myself, Vishnu, Mulan and Kira de Frito sit; he begins
to write on a white board with a blue felt marker. “This
is a great color,” he says. I push the snout back deep
into my head and just smile. I am not a corporate werewolf,
no, not yet. Not until I truly drink the blood of corporate
boredom.
Mike flashed his immunity idol at me before I walked into the
meeting. “I’m a fucker,” he smiled. I agreed.
“Will you ever attend a meeting?” I said.
“What do you think?” he said as he walked off with
a bag of Doritos.
The marketing meeting is underway and I’m not listening.
Mulan has brought in an entire box of teddy bear grahams. She
dumps them onto the table and I’m thinking they died instantaneously
from hitting the room’s aire of boredom. I start drawing
pictures of them. Teddy bears dancing, teddy bear balloons,
teddy bear adverts, teddy bear stormtrooper battle scenes and
Milt as Darth Graham Teddy.
Milt is talking and I know that Mulan stares at something she
thinks she sees in his nose. I don’t think she’s
wrong. I just don’t want to look. She’s hypnotized
though. Poor thing. She’s deeply infected with the virus.
It’s got her locked in a stare-down with the manager’s
nose. For some reason she doesn’t look like a werewolf.
God help me if I’m going to listen to anything that’s
being said; although I’m sure it’s something like
this:
“You all don’t seem to get it,” says Milt.
Quiet stares.
“There is something integral here to this department
that everyone has lost. It’s called ‘family’.”
More quiet stares.
“Do you all understand what I’m saying? Look here,
I have drawn for you on the white board the most important marketing
strategy of our time. It goes something like this…”
Here once again is the caterpillar marketing plan. I stop listening
and start grabbing teddy bear grahams and lining them up against
my notepad so that they stand up to face Butterlink; as if every
one of these cookie creatures deserves to listen to the most
inventive marketing plan of the century. I have about eight
of them, two without arms, all lined up. As I grab another,
Milt suddenly stops talking and stares. He sees the teddy bear
grahams and pauses to look at them as if they are judging the
very core of his plan. There is an uncomfortable silence. He
seems to lean forward until he suddenly says, “I, I can’t
talk to you while they’re looking at me.” He pauses
and stares again. I wonder what he’s thinking; I’m
sure he’s contemplating their cookie brains, or like me,
this moment in some kind of Hollywood screenplay that he’ll
never write. “I blame you all for not being a family,”
he quietly says. “I’m disappointed in you all. You’re
nothings,” he says.
Now it’s getting harsh. Even I stop crunching on cookies.
I’m hoping the grahams aren’t offended. But at least
my snout stops growing; I’m tired of pushing it back in.
This is a front row seat to corporate drama...
